Long-standing plant biochemistry mystery solved
Monday, September 19, 2011 - 14:01
in Biology & Nature
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have discovered how an enzyme "knows" where to insert a double bond when desaturating plant fatty acids. Understanding the mechanism -- which relies on a single amino acid far from the enzyme's active site -- solves a 40-year mystery of how these enzymes exert such location-specific control. The work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of September 19, 2011, may lead to new ways to engineer plant oils as a renewable replacement for petrochemicals.